On 12 September 1990, about ten months after the Fall of the Berlin Wall, the foreign ministers of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) and the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) met with their French, American, British, and Soviet counterparts in Moscow to sign the so-called Two-Plus-Four Treaty. This paved the way for the German Reunification, which was finalized roughly one month later, on 3 October—the Tag der Deutschen Einheit (‘Day of the German Unity’)—when the five eastern states officially joined the FRG.
It’s now been 25 years since these events took place, and as Germany is looking forward to celebrating the anniversary of its reunification on Saturday, one can expect the German press to commemorate this special date as usual—with a myriad of articles exploring the differences that supposedly still exist between East and West. In the past, such discussions have typically focused on the question of whether the East German economy has finally caught up with the West’s (no, it. . .